Bloomberg: We Should Stop and Frisk More Black People
Ed Brayton looks at crime stats
I have a hard time expressing just how much I loathe New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his latest appalling claim about the NYPD’s blatantly unconstitutional stop and frisk policy are a perfect example why. Despite the massive racial disparities in who gets stopped and frisked, Bloomberg thinks it isn’t quite racist enough yet:
One newspaper and one news service, they just keep saying ‘oh it’s a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group.’ That may be, but it’s not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the [crime]. In that case, incidentally, I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little. It’s exactly the reverse of what they’re saying. I don’t know where they went to school, but they certainly didn’t take a math course. Or a logic course.
Really? You stop too many white people? Then why does it turn out that a higher percentage of the white people who are being stopped are found to actually be breaking the law than the black and Latino people you stop? In fact, white people who are stopped and frisked are twice as likely to be found with a gun. Could it be because your officers have to have stronger evidence to become suspicious of a white person while they are automatically suspicious of a dark-skinned person? Not only is that conclusion logical, it is supported by a mountain of social psychological research too.
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